Stegoceratops Milk
by Lord Kristine
Summary: I'm not good at descriptions.


There are many things in the universe that demand a complex explanation, including the origin of life on Earth, the physics behind black holes, and why Claire Dearing the stegoceratops was currently feeding her hybrid baby breast milk through her horns. Unlike the previous examples, this phenomenon was no mystery, and had a simple yet outlandish justification. A few years back, Claire had partaken in an adventure that ended with her surrendering a magical flower to her mortal enemy, saving her life in the process. For this reason and many others, she was now a dinosaur, which made it very difficult for a certain narrator to establish her situation to the casual reader who might stumble upon a short story without having read the main body of work.

You know. Metaphorically.

Anyway, she was currently lying on her belly with her human-dinosaur daughter sucking on her horn, because her biology was very, very weird. Her husband, Owen Grady, was attempting to knit a scarf on the chesterfield, and (unsurprisingly) he was failing miserably.

"I think I dropped a stitch. How do I get it back?"

Claire shrugged.

"Dunno. My mother only ever taught me to sew. She used to make the most beautiful Halloween costumes . . ."

Owen struggled to fix his mistake, but the yarn got laced around his fingers. He untangled himself and threw his needles to the ground childishly.

"Knitting is stupid," he muttered.

"Stop being such a baby," Claire retorted, "Why do you have to be so negative about everything? Just because you aren't good at something doesn't mean it's devoid of value."

Owen crossed his arms and leaned back with a grumpy pout.

"It's a hobby for old ladies. And how long do you plan to do that, anyway?"

"Do what?"

"The horn-milk-thing."

"Until Lily is two. That's the recommended age."

Owen rolled his eyes.

"Give me a break. That's just an old wive's tale that they made up to humiliate toddlers."

"It isn't!" Claire insisted, "Milk is important for development, and furthermore, when you're an adult, you should drink a glass of normal milk every day to avoid looking like Gollum when you're eighty. Without calcium, your spine will contort into a crooked mess."

"And I suppose you're going to keep puking up grass for her too?"

Claire growled.

"It's called regurgitation, and it's perfectly normal."

Owen scoffed.

"Sure, if you think 'normal' is synonymous with 'disgusting'."

"Oh my god, you're just like Nestle!" Claire spat.

"Nestle?"

"The Nestle corporation encouraged women in Africa to feed their babies formula instead of breast milk. You can image how _that_ turned out . . ."

Suddenly, a dragon appeared in the room carrying a legal disclaimer.

"Excuse me, but I'm going to have to ask you to stop spreading lies and slander about Nestlé, which is spelled with an accented 'e', by the way."

Claire's eyes went wide.

"What the- Were you _spying_ on us?"

The dragon waved her paw vaguely.

"Spying . . . is a relative term . . ."

Claire groaned and rolled her eyes.

"Nevermind. We'll discuss that later. Why are you so keen to defend Nestle? They're so obviously corrupted."

"I'm not taking a stance on Nestlé. I can neither confirm nor deny that we have any partnerships or business ties with said corporation," she declared as she nibbled on an Aero bar.

"This is amoral," Claire grumbled, "Not only are you feeding into the corporate hivemind, but you seem to be interfering with my private life."

"Welcome to America, and also, weren't you in charge of a major corporation for a decade or so?"

Claire gave a noncommittal hum.

"Well, it wasn't exactly the same thing."

The dragon crossed her arms.

"Oh yeah? Tell that to Disneyland or Seaworld . . . or the hellhole known as Marineland."

Claire stomped her front foot.

"Look, every corporation has its flaws, but some take it _way_ too far. Case and point: Nestle."

The dragon folded her ears back angrily.

"Well, who says that _your_ ideals are perfect?"

"It's harmful to withhold from breastfeeding!"

"That's your opinion."

"It's a _fact_ and anyone who doesn't agree with it is abusing their child. Every parent has certain responsibilities towards their offspring, like teaching them to swim."

"What if they wear a burqa? Hashtag: confirmed for racist."

"Stop using hashtags in real life!"

"Derailing! Derailing! She's derailing my argument!"

"I'm not! You're being an idiot!"

"OFFENSIVE!"

"You're reading too deep into this."

"You're reading too deep into _your face_!"

Owen stepped between them.

"Guys, stop. This is getting out of hand. Yes, corporations tend to manipulate the public into making bad decisions, but some people are perfectly capable of making bad choices on their own, regardless of the media they consume. It's unwise to trust a single source of information, which is why you shouldn't put anything on a pedestal and claim that it's the absolute truth. If you base your life around a single idea, the flaws in said ideology will bring you down. Use your best judgment, and when you're not sure about something, research both sides of the argument. If you stick to a single dogma, you're denying yourself the right to seek out the truth."

Claire blinked.

"Wow, Owen, that was surprisingly deep."

"Yeah, but he's part Scottish, so it doesn't count," the dragon sneered, "If you'll excuse me, I'm going home to collect my paycheck from Nestlé."

She disappeared. Owen and Claire exchanged a puzzled look.

"What did we learn today?" Owen asked.

Claire sighed.

"Not a damn thing."

Owen shrugged.

"Well, that's how it always is. There's no way to say for sure whether we're right or wrong about any particular issue."

"By that logic, we know nothing whatsoever."

"Not really. There are ways to prove that the Earth is round, for example. It's a falsifiable claim, but just because something can be proven false doesn't mean that it's wrong. As a matter of fact, that makes it more valid than most claims. Your argument that breastfeeding is beneficial can be tested, which means that we can come to a conclusion. The idea that Nestle is a perfect corporation is also testable, and in testing this hypothesis, we can see that it's false. Our friend, however, is trying to twist the truth to fit her preconceived beliefs, which makes her wrong by default. If she truly values her ideals, she should be prepared to doubt them, because she has nothing to fear by dissecting her claim."

"I don't think she's convinced that Nestlé is perfect. I'm pretty sure they just paid her to say that."

Owen nodded.

"Probably. In any case, the lesson here is that ideas are only valid if they can be proven false."

"And there are no absolute truths."

"Except that knitting is stupid."


End file.
